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A Sociolinguistic Approach to the Persian Native Speakers’ Strategies for Expressing Sorrow and Happiness: A Comparison of the Gender Differences

Received: 19 March 2018     Accepted: 28 April 2018     Published: 21 May 2018
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Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the strategies adopted by Persian native speakers for expressing their happiness and sorrow. For this purpose, the researcher spent one month observing the behavior of different male and female native speakers of Farsi who were of different ages between 12-68. The researcher collected the data either by participating different events of happiness and sorrow or putting the audience under one of these circumstances by giving them some good or bad news in order to audit their way of expressing happiness and sorrow. The responses collected were extracted as 8 happiness expression strategies (surprise, positive adjectives, appreciation, thanking God, expressing emotions and statements and informal emotional expression) and 6 sorrow-expression strategies (expressing pity, questions, statements, curse words and threatening). Among these strategies, statement was common in both happiness and sorrow strategies. After identifying the strategies, the number and percentage of each strategy was calculated for male and female participants. The results indicated that surprise, thanking God, statements and appreciation are the most frequent happiness strategies among male participants and expressing emotions and surprise are the most frequently-used happiness strategies among female ones. One important point in the strategy of "expressing emotion" is that it is a female-specific strategy not used by male population at all. On the other hand, regarding expressions of sorrow, according to the findings of this research, expressing pity is the most frequent strategy both for males and females. In expressing sorrow, using curse words is the second rank for male participants and other strategies are somehow equally-used among both groups as the difference between the frequencies of male and female was not that considerable.

Published in International Journal of Literature and Arts (Volume 6, Issue 1)
DOI 10.11648/j.ijla.20180601.14
Page(s) 19-27
Creative Commons

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright

Copyright © The Author(s), 2018. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Happiness Strategies, Sorrow Strategies, Sociolinguistics, Gender

References
[1] Behr, N. (2012). "Mnemonic Techniques in L2 Vocabulary Acquisition." Retrieved from http://mdh.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:616805/FULLTEXT02.pdf
[2] Ellis R. (2001). Introduction: investigating form-focused instruction. Language Learning 51(1): 1–46.
[3] Hancock, J. T. Verbal irony use in computer-mediated and face-to-face conversations. Journal of Language and SocialPsychology, 23 447-463, 2004.
[4] Hancock, J. T. et al, 2007. Expressing emotion in text-based communication, journal of Language and social Psychology,
[5] Sadeghi, K. &Savojbolaghchilar, S. A comparative study of refusal strategies used by Iranian and Americans. International Journal of Academic Research. Vol. 3, No. 2. March, 2011.
[6] L. Beebe, T. Takahashi and R. Uliss-Weltz. Pragmatic transfer in ESL refusals. In R. Scarcella, E. S. Andersen, and S. D. Krashen, Eds. Developing communicative competence in a second Language (pp. 55–73). Newbury House: New York, 1990, pp. 55-73.
[7] J. Yang. How to say ‘No’ in Chinese: A pragmatic study of refusal strategies in five TV series. The 20th North American Conference on Chinese linguistics (NACCL-20) The Ohio State University, Ohio, 2008, pp. 1041-1058.
[8] Bajgar, J., Ciarrochi, J., Lane, R., & Deane, F. (2005). Development of the levels of emotional awareness scale for children (LEAS-C). British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 23(4), 569-586.
[9] Bauer, P., Stennes, L., &Haight, J. (2003). Representation of the inner self in autobiography: Women’s and men’s use of internal states language in personal narratives. Memory, 11(1), 27-42.
[10] Chaplin, T. (2006). Anger, happiness, and sadness: Associations with depressive symptoms in late adolescence. Journal of Youth & Adolescence, 35(6), 977-986.
[11] Fischer, A. (1995). Emotion concepts as a function of gender. In J. A. Russell, J.-M. Fernandez-Dols, A. S. R. Manstead, & J. C. Wellenkamp (Eds.), Everyday conceptions of emotion: an introduction to the psychology, anthropology and linguistics of emotion (pp. 457–474). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
[12] O’Kearney, R., &Dadds, M. (2004). Developmental and gender differences in the language for emotions across the adolescent years. Cognition and Emotion, 18(7), 913-938. Schirmer, A., Zysset, S.,
[13] Vainik, E. (2006). Intracultural variation of semantic and episodic emotion knowledge in Estonian. Trames, 10(2), 169-189.
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  • APA Style

    Mostafa Rahimi Rad. (2018). A Sociolinguistic Approach to the Persian Native Speakers’ Strategies for Expressing Sorrow and Happiness: A Comparison of the Gender Differences. International Journal of Literature and Arts, 6(1), 19-27. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijla.20180601.14

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    ACS Style

    Mostafa Rahimi Rad. A Sociolinguistic Approach to the Persian Native Speakers’ Strategies for Expressing Sorrow and Happiness: A Comparison of the Gender Differences. Int. J. Lit. Arts 2018, 6(1), 19-27. doi: 10.11648/j.ijla.20180601.14

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    AMA Style

    Mostafa Rahimi Rad. A Sociolinguistic Approach to the Persian Native Speakers’ Strategies for Expressing Sorrow and Happiness: A Comparison of the Gender Differences. Int J Lit Arts. 2018;6(1):19-27. doi: 10.11648/j.ijla.20180601.14

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  • @article{10.11648/j.ijla.20180601.14,
      author = {Mostafa Rahimi Rad},
      title = {A Sociolinguistic Approach to the Persian Native Speakers’ Strategies for Expressing Sorrow and Happiness: A Comparison of the Gender Differences},
      journal = {International Journal of Literature and Arts},
      volume = {6},
      number = {1},
      pages = {19-27},
      doi = {10.11648/j.ijla.20180601.14},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijla.20180601.14},
      eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ijla.20180601.14},
      abstract = {This study aimed to investigate the strategies adopted by Persian native speakers for expressing their happiness and sorrow. For this purpose, the researcher spent one month observing the behavior of different male and female native speakers of Farsi who were of different ages between 12-68. The researcher collected the data either by participating different events of happiness and sorrow or putting the audience under one of these circumstances by giving them some good or bad news in order to audit their way of expressing happiness and sorrow. The responses collected were extracted as 8 happiness expression strategies (surprise, positive adjectives, appreciation, thanking God, expressing emotions and statements and informal emotional expression) and 6 sorrow-expression strategies (expressing pity, questions, statements, curse words and threatening). Among these strategies, statement was common in both happiness and sorrow strategies. After identifying the strategies, the number and percentage of each strategy was calculated for male and female participants. The results indicated that surprise, thanking God, statements and appreciation are the most frequent happiness strategies among male participants and expressing emotions and surprise are the most frequently-used happiness strategies among female ones. One important point in the strategy of "expressing emotion" is that it is a female-specific strategy not used by male population at all. On the other hand, regarding expressions of sorrow, according to the findings of this research, expressing pity is the most frequent strategy both for males and females. In expressing sorrow, using curse words is the second rank for male participants and other strategies are somehow equally-used among both groups as the difference between the frequencies of male and female was not that considerable.},
     year = {2018}
    }
    

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    AU  - Mostafa Rahimi Rad
    Y1  - 2018/05/21
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    N1  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijla.20180601.14
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    JO  - International Journal of Literature and Arts
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    AB  - This study aimed to investigate the strategies adopted by Persian native speakers for expressing their happiness and sorrow. For this purpose, the researcher spent one month observing the behavior of different male and female native speakers of Farsi who were of different ages between 12-68. The researcher collected the data either by participating different events of happiness and sorrow or putting the audience under one of these circumstances by giving them some good or bad news in order to audit their way of expressing happiness and sorrow. The responses collected were extracted as 8 happiness expression strategies (surprise, positive adjectives, appreciation, thanking God, expressing emotions and statements and informal emotional expression) and 6 sorrow-expression strategies (expressing pity, questions, statements, curse words and threatening). Among these strategies, statement was common in both happiness and sorrow strategies. After identifying the strategies, the number and percentage of each strategy was calculated for male and female participants. The results indicated that surprise, thanking God, statements and appreciation are the most frequent happiness strategies among male participants and expressing emotions and surprise are the most frequently-used happiness strategies among female ones. One important point in the strategy of "expressing emotion" is that it is a female-specific strategy not used by male population at all. On the other hand, regarding expressions of sorrow, according to the findings of this research, expressing pity is the most frequent strategy both for males and females. In expressing sorrow, using curse words is the second rank for male participants and other strategies are somehow equally-used among both groups as the difference between the frequencies of male and female was not that considerable.
    VL  - 6
    IS  - 1
    ER  - 

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Author Information
  • Department of English Languages, Allameh Tabataba'i University, Tehran, Iran

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